“Oh, it’s true enough,” said May sharply, as she arranged her bonnet strings, and bent forward to catch a glimpse of her great ostrich feather.
Claire looked at her with her face drawn with care and horror, while she wondered at the indifference of the little wife, and the easy way in which she was trying to shift the trouble and responsibility of her weakness and folly upon her sister.
“Why, May, you could not have been seventeen.”
“Sixteen and a half,” said May. “Heigho! I begin to feel quite an old woman now.”
“But, Frank? Do you ever think of the consequences if he were to know?”
“Why, of course I do, you silly thing. Haven’t I lain in bed and quaked hundreds of times for fear he should ever find out? How can you talk so? Why do you suppose I came to you, if it was not that I was afraid of his getting to know?”
“May, it would drive our father mad if all came out.”
“Of course it would. Now you are beginning to wake up and understand why I have come.”
“How could you accept Frank Burnett, and deceive him so?”
“How could I marry him? What would papa have said if I had refused? Don’t talk stuff.”